Transmission of Breton among immersion-school students: the impact of home language

Book section : Chapter

This chapter examines the impact of the linguistic environment of the home on the Breton of teenaged speakers who attend the lise Diwan, a Breton immersion school for students aged 15–18. Many of these students speak little or no Breton at home, and consequently, their only Breton input is through education. Others may speak Breton at home, but the nature of their Breton and the amount spoken vary widely. This chapter explores how a student’s home language(s) may affect the Breton they use from a structural perspective, drawing on fieldwork data from students with a range of linguistic backgrounds to investigate specific morphophonological features: grammatical gender and initial consonant mutation. The findings show that students who use Breton frequently with fluent parents or grandparents tend to use a greater proportion of these typical Breton morphophonological features themselves, while those who speak Breton at home less often are more likely to omit these features or be influenced by French.

Authors: Kennard, H

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Host title: Transmitting Minority Languages: Complementary Reversing Language Shift Strategies
• Pages: 247-275
• Series: Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities
• Publication date: 2022-04-18
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-87910-5_10
• EISSN: 2947-5899
• ISSN: 2947-5880
• EISBN: 9783030879105
• ISBN: 9783030879099
• Language: English
• Subtype: Chapter